Silverwest Hawaii Holdings
In mid-2021, the Hawaii hotel market started a significant recovery from its COVID-19 isolation coinciding with a resurgence in leisure travel from mainland US since Hawaii was a perceived safer and less complex travel destination than other, non-US, tropical destinations and summer travel to Europe. This recovery resulted in high demand for Hawaii resorts for visitors, and, in turn, for institutional investors where the supply of high-quality resort investment opportunities was limited, both now and in the future, due to Hawaii’s high barrier to entry for new resort development.
In September 2021, Silverwest together with its financial advisors, recognized the opportunity to recapitalize its two Hawaii properties, the Waikoloa Beach Marriot Resort & Spa on the island of Hawaii, and a Curio Collection by Hilton hotel development project on the Island of Kauai. The result was a limited offering to sophisticated institutional investors to invest in a fee-simple, two property Hawaii resort portfolio, Hawaii Holdings, which offered stable cash flow from Waikoloa together with opportunistic returns from the development of a new, premium branded full-service hotel in a market with extremely high barriers to entry. Silverwest’s existing investors had the opportunity to exit at the current attractive fully recovered value or reinvest in Hawaii Holdings.